Welcome to Medical News Today

Healthline Media, Inc. would like to process and share personal data (e.g., mobile ad id) and data about your use of our site (e.g., content interests) with our third party partners (see a current list) using cookies and similar automatic collection tools in order to a) personalize content and/or offers on our site or other sites, b) communicate with you upon request, and/or c) for additional reasons upon notice and, when applicable, with your consent.

Healthline Media, Inc. is based in and operates this site from the United States. Any data you provide will be primarily stored and processed in the United States, pursuant to the laws of the United States, which may provide lesser privacy protections than European Economic Area countries.

By clicking “accept” below, you acknowledge and grant your consent for these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form. Learn more in our Privacy Policy.

Please accept our privacy terms

We use cookies and similar technologies to improve your browsing experience, personalize content and offers, show targeted ads, analyze traffic, and better understand you. We may share your information with third-party partners for marketing purposes. To learn more and make choices about data use, visit our Advertising Policy and Privacy Policy. By clicking “Accept and Continue” below, (1) you consent to these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form, and (2) you consent to allow your data to be transferred, processed, and stored in the United States.

Caffeine slashes death risk in women with diabetes

Both tea and coffee have a wide range of health benefits, but consuming caffeine may be particularly good for women with diabetes. Recent research shows that for these people, one daily cup of coffee cuts death risk by more than 50 percent.

A new study shows that women with diabetes who consume one regular cup of coffee every day are much less likely to die prematurely than those who do not.

The study - which was jointly led by Dr. João Sérgio Neves and Prof. Davide Carvalho, both from the University of Porto in Portugal - examined the link between consuming different amounts of caffeine and mortality risk among men and women with diabetes.

Studying caffeine and death risk

Dr. Neves and team looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected between 1999 and 2010. For their study, the researchers examined 1,568 women and 1,484 men with diabetes.

They evaluated the participants' caffeine intake using "24-hour dietary recalls" - that is, interviews that assessed the participants' coffee consumption during the previous 24 hours. Subjects were also asked about the source of their caffeine, be it from coffee, tea, or soft drinks.

The authors used Cox proportional hazard models to adjust for factors that might confound the results, including body mass index (BMI), income and education, alcohol consumption, smoking, high blood pressure, and the number of years that have passed since the diabetes diagnosis.

Drinking two coffees daily cuts death risk

Over the 11-year period, 618 people died. No significant association was found between caffeine consumption and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, or cancer-related mortality among men.

However, women who had up to 100 milligrams of caffeine - the equivalent of one cup of coffee - every day had a 51 percent lower risk of dying prematurely than women who did not have any caffeine.

The findings were dose-dependent: women who had between 100 and 200 milligrams of caffeine daily were 57 percent less likely to die compared with their non-consuming counterparts.

Furthermore, those who consumed more than 200 milligrams daily - the equivalent of two cups of coffee - had a 66 percent lower risk of death.

Getting one's caffeine intake from tea also had a beneficial effect. "Women who consumed more caffeine from tea had reduced mortality from cancer," write the authors.

More specifically, women who had the highest intake of caffeine from tea were 80 percent less likely to die from cancer compared with women who did not get any caffeine from their tea.

"The effect on mortality appears to depend on the source of caffeine, with a protective effect of coffee consumption on all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality, and a protective effect of caffeine from tea on cancer mortality among women with diabetes."

Strengths and limitations of the study

When speaking to Medical News Today about the strengths and limitations of the research, Dr. Neves explained, "We evaluated a cohort of participants from a large database representative of the American population, data was prospectively collected, and hard outcome measures such as death and cause-specific mortality were used."

"Furthermore, we adjusted our analysis for the main biologically plausible confounders," he added.

"As for limitations," Dr. Neves continued, "we assessed caffeine consumption only at the start of the study and we cannot exclude that this data may not represent long-term dietary habits. No adjustment was performed for additives present in caffeine-containing beverages."

2018 Healthline Media UK Ltd. All rights reserved. MNT is the registered trade mark of Healthline Media. Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.